Archive for the ‘Dog Treats’ Category

If I don’t keep Happy Dawg fed to her standards (which means feeding her every half hour), then she tends to eat anything she finds on our walks. And I mean ANYTHING. Who am I kidding; she eats the gross stuff no matter how often I feed her. But if I keep treats around for her, she doesn’t tear into the trash cans any time I leave the house. I had some ground venison leftover and some green beans that were about to mold, so I thought I’d experiment with a new treat. I call them Doggie Burgers and Happy loves them. Of course, she also like cat poop. I like to think she’d pick these over the poop. She jumped up on the kitchen table looking for more of them after our photo shoot…I’ve only ever seen her do that for jelly donuts!

After much waiting, Happy gets a doggie burger. She ate it to fast to capture that moment.

Recipe: Doggie Burgers

Summary: a healthy treat for your best friend

Ingredients

1 pound ground venison

1 cup green beans

Â½ cup frozen peas, thawed

1 teaspoon meat tenderizer

Â¼ cup rice flour, oat bran, or similar

Instructions

Place the ground venison in a large mixing bowl.

Finely chop the beans and peas in a food processor and add to the bowl with the meat.

Add the meat tenderizer and flour to the bowl and mix everything together well.

Form meat into bite sized â€œburgers.â€ For Happy Dawg, I use about 2 teaspoons of meat per ball, and make the balls flat.

Make small, flat burgers at whatever size you want for your dog treat.

Place each burger on a dehydrator tray. Dehydrate on 155Â° for 6 to 10 hours. Timing will depend on how big and thick you made the burgers. The burgers pictured dehydrated for 8 hours.

Happy knows something good is happening on the counter, and she can't wait!

Quick Notes

These will last in the refrigerator for a couple of weeks. I usually divide the doggie treats into a few batches and freeze them.

Variations

You can skip the flour if you wish; I added it to help keep the mini burgers together.

I wish I had a camera with me when sweet little Shih Tzu Tamu snatched one of these doggie treats right out of her friend Olive’s mouth. Poor Olive looked so confused.

If you want to make the dog in your life go crazy, make these treats. The process is a little messy, but the end product is worth it. We use venison liver, but if you don’t have access to that, calf liver from the store will work too. Beware: Your dog will become addicted very quickly. We call it “crack” for a reason.

Doggie Crack Biscuits

The original recipe came from Dog Aware. We used the ingredients from one recipe with the cooking instructions from the other.

Ingredients

1 lb liver pureed

1 cup flour

1 cup rice flour or corn meal (graham cracker would work too)

2 tbs honey or molasses

2 tbs garlic salt

Dash oil

Directions

Mix all ingredients together and spread in 8×8 microwavable dish. Cook for 7 minutes in the microwave. Remove from dish and cut into small squares (about 1 in x 1 in) while warm. Then dehydrate until all moisture is gone (about three hours). If you don’t have a dehydrator, you can bake at 200 for about two hours.

Have you ever known a dog that wouldn’t eat anything you put near it’s mouth? It’s a rare dog indeed who is a food snob.

Our beloved Happy Dawg is just such a rare creature. She won’t eat anything raw…it must all be cooked just so (even her yummy venison bones). Drop some ground meat on the floor, and it will sit there all night. This animal is the pickiest eater ever in canine history.

Rick really wanted to find some treats for her so he could reward her when she does things like behave during a bath or track a deer. But we tried everything, and it was no go. So, yesterday, he decided to make some liver jerky and see if that might make her salivate.

Bingo! This dog is performing every trick in the book to earn a treat. She LOVES them. Sid, the little gray cat, was not interested at all. (If it doesn’t have cheese on it, she could care less.)

Happy Dawg Jerky Treats

1-quart water

1 tbs plain salt

1 tbs Worcestershire sauce

1 tsp black pepper

1 tsp onion powder

1 tsp garlic powder

Venison liver sliced 1/8â€ thick (we usually do two livers at a time)

Set aside the venison liver. Combine all other ingredients, stirring so that they dissovle. Add the liver and soak for five minutes. Remove liver, place on paper towels, and pat dry. Place the liver on dehydrator trays, or if youâ€™re using a conventional oven, on cookie sheets lined with wax paper. Dehydrate on lowest setting for 6 to 8 hours. (in the oven, put on lowest temperate and leave the oven door open a crackâ€¦you may have to play with the timing and temperature to figure out what works best.